A rights group, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety), has asked the new national chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Ojo Amupitan, to use the 8 November governorship election in Anambra State to restore confidence in the commission.

It stated that the issues that have trailed elections conducted in the country since 1999 indicate that Nigeria has not produced an acceptable chairman for the commission to deepen its fledgling democracy.

In a statement in Enugu, the group stated that the elections conducted by the commission under Prof Humphrey Nwosu have remained the best in several years after the exercise was held, stressing that the country must transform for the better.

Intersociety, in the statement signed by its chairman, Emeka Umeagbalasi, said: “The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law has observed that Nigeria is yet to produce a better and top-rated back-to-back democracy INEC chairman in the past 26 years, or since May 1999. In other words, the country’s electoral midwifery has been better managed by previous National Electoral Commissions’ helmsmen who held sway during Nigeria’s military inglorious epochs.

“It is on indisputable record that the best National Electoral Commission helmsman among the military-era National Electoral Commissions’ chairmen is Prof Humphrey Nwosu, who is also the overall best since the first indigenous elections across Nigeria commenced in 1959.”

He said the trio of former chairmen of the commission—Prof Mahmood Yakubu (Oct 2015–Oct 2025), Prof Maurice Iwu (June 2005–April 2010), and Prof Attahiru Jega (June 2010–June 2015)—share the list of Nigeria’s “very lowly” performing and rated chairmen, based on the misconduct that characterised their tenures.

“For instance, under Attahiru Jega as INEC chairman, the National Register of Voters was allegedly tainted, tampered with, and flooded with millions of underage persons and aliens as ‘bearers of Permanent Voters’ Cards,’ especially in the North, as against the South, where millions of eligible voters were schemed out, denied registration, and PVC validation and issuance allegedly on the grounds of ethnicity and religion.

“Prof Iwu’s era as chairman is historically remembered for maintaining a National Register of Voters with more than half of the names being inanimate objects, including logs of wood, wooden windows and doors; human skulls; pictures uploaded from photo studios; and images from across African countries, including public figures from South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc.

“During Prof Mahmood Yakubu’s era, the commission recorded the worst electoral process management and midwifery in Nigeria since May 1999. Prof Yakubu’s era as INEC chairman should have been the best if scientific and technological evolution and advancements at his maximum disposal, including ‘comfort-room’ and polling-unit scene electronic or digital voting, had been neutrally, positively, patriotically, and nationally utilised or deployed,” the group said.

The group said the exit of Mahmood from the commission was an opportunity to use the Anambra State governorship election to chart a new direction for the country’s elections.